


old enough to start reading fairytales again

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: long and happy was their reign [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Growing Old Together, Growing Up, Lawyers, Love, Multi, Polyamory, The Problem of Susan, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Whenever Susan visits the Professor, she makes sure to take a trip to the room with the wardrobe.When she enters the room, she remembers fruitless attempts by Edmund and Lucy to return after their first expulsion from their kingdom. She remembers them returning day after day, for weeks and then months.She traces her fingertips along the wood of the outside of the wardrobe, but she never makes an attempt to open it. She isn’t even tempted to open the door. She doesn’t want to open the door, to see if Aslan has given her a glimpse into the world he never gave her siblings back when they needed it.She has more than made her peace with this world- she has fallen in love with it. She has fallen in love with the people here, her job, and her briefcase. She has no desire to return to her old kingdom, not when she has built her own here.-When Susan left Narnia, left paradise, she left one breathtaking world for another. She left the beauties of Beruna, the majesty of the Lone Islands and the grandeur of Cair Paravel, for two people who love her, a never-ending line of innocent defendants, and a small house made for three.(She cannot believe she made the wrong choice.)





	old enough to start reading fairytales again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/gifts).



> Title is from C.S. Lewis.

The first gray hair appears in Claudia’s hair the day Susan tells her lovers the truth about Narnia.

-

Susan does not wish for Narnia. She is not wistful for a time gone by, a world she no longer rules. When she tells fairytales about a land she once considered home, she is not waxing nostalgic over a lost love. She is relating legends as facts, detailing the reasons for every wrinkle without an explanation, every nightmare that sticks to her mind after all these years. She is explaining the weight of decades on her shoulders, the age in her eyes.

(She is hoping that they will understand.)

Abraham, sweet man that he is, accepts her stories almost instantly.

Claudia does not.

-

She finds Claudia sitting on their back porch. Getting a house a bit into the countryside, away from too many prying eyes, was a good plan- there’s less judgement here. Whether or not they broadcast their strange, multiple relationship, the mere fact that Abraham’s Jewish and Claudia’s black will create suspicion in their neighbors. Susan distantly remembers times in Narnia, where she negotiated the justice for the dwarves and the centaurs against centuries of human oppression.

She sits down on the stoop next to her partner, and Claudia leans her head against Susan’s shoulder, a cigar dangling from her fingertips. “I believe you,” she says, voice husky from a smoke.

“Why?” Susan asks, because while her sister’s curiosity is the dangerous kind, without regard to consequence, Susan has learned how to turn her own curiosity into a tool.

“I’ve known you for too long, Su. I know when you’re lying. Your mad fairytale’s gotta be true, if only in your mind. And I long ago decided to listen to you and ‘Ham. I promised myself that I would always try my best to understand where you are coming from.”

“Then why’d you protest?”

Claudia takes a puff of her cigar. “A land with talking animals and fauns and water gods? Su, only storytellers like ‘Ham would take that and instantly accept it.”

Footsteps creak behind them and ‘Ham’s voice says, “Did I just hear my name? I brought tea."

Claudia lifts her head from Susan's shoulder and they both turn to see Abraham, mugs of tea in hand. His smile is as soft as his sweater.

Claudia snuffs out the end of her cigar in their ashtray as Susan stands, taking one of the dead from Abraham's hand. Claudia gestures to the steps beside her. "There's more than enough room for all of us," she says, a slight smile on her lips.

Abraham sits down on the other side of Claudia and hands her her tea, leaving Susan to resume her spot next to Claudia. "So," Abraham says, "Narnia. You were a Queen."

"High Queen," Claudia corrects gently. Even after twenty years of living together, her mind is still as sharp as Peter's blade. She remembers whatever you tell her. "Susan the Gentle, you said, of the Radiant Southern Sun."

Susan nods. "The Great Archer," she begins again, and thirty years later the tale spills from her lips like it was just yesterday. "Our reign began in the Narnian year 1015, a month after the White Witch had been slayed..."

* * *

Susan has always been a woman of principle, not of faith. She puts skepticism over blind faith, prefers proof to conjecture. However, she does not begrudge her partners their religious practices. She understands believing in higher power, in a force- it’s what her siblings did for years.

(She has just had too much experience with what she believes in being ripped from her unsuspecting fingertips to put faith in any greater power. Ever since her first trip out of Narnia, thirty two bright years of age, back into the body of a fourteen-year-old, she cannot give her world into the grasp of some god.)

She goes to synagogue with Abraham on Saturdays, and to labour meetings with Claudia on Tuesday nights. The three of them celebrate the Shabbat on Saturday, witnessing Abraham’s Friday night _kiddush_ prayers. Abraham’s religion makes as large a part of him as Narnia makes up Susan, or Labour ideals mean to Claudia.

The three of them support each other in everything that they do, just as Susan and her siblings did in Narnia. This is the Thomas-Miller-Pevensie family. This is their small kingdom, carved out of schoolrooms and law books and witness stands.

This is everything Susan loves.

* * *

Whenever she visits the Professor, she makes sure to take a trip to the room with the wardrobe.

When she enters the room, she remembers fruitless attempts by Edmund and Lucy to return after their first expulsion from their kingdom. She remembers them returning day after day, for weeks and then months, every day until they were sent back into the city to go to school. Edmund’s attempts were far more desperate than Lucy’s.

She traces her fingertips along the wood of the outside of the wardrobe, but she never makes an attempt to open it. She isn’t even tempted to open the door. She doesn’t _want_ to open the door, to see if Aslan has given her a glimpse into the world he never gave her siblings back when they needed it.

She has more than made her peace with this world- she has fallen in love with it. She has fallen in love with the people here, her job, and her briefcase. She has no desire to return to her old kingdom, not when she has built her own here.

“Is that infamous wardrobe?” Claudia ask from the doorway to the storage room.

Susan doesn’t turn to look at her lover. For a few moments, she just stands in front of the wardrobe that contained every dream and every nightmare of her adolescence. “Yes,” she says, “This is the wardrobe. Not one that I wanted to return to it.”

(Somewhere, beyond that wood, are her siblings. Due to the strangeness of time, they may be dead. They may be alive. They may be married, have kids, be teenagers or corpses. She’ll never know.

She’s content not knowing this one thing.)

Susan takes a deep breath and withdraws her hand from the wardrobe. She knows she’ll be returning back here in a few years, as always, but for now she is good. She has a life to live outside of this place; it does no good to dwell for too long on the world she remembers.

She has closed the door on this part of her life.

She turns around and heads out of the room, only stopping at the doorway to take Claudia’s arm in hers.

-

She returns to court, to her home and her partners. A combination of respect, childhood nostalgia, and maybe, perhaps, some grief, keeps her returning to that almost-empty room, but she doesn’t need to stay locked in the past.

Instead, she takes the war she remembers, the treaties she fought for, into her courtroom. She takes the strengths she learned in Narnia- the aiming of a bow, the strength of words and a glance- and applies to them to a different kind of court.

Just because her hands are not calloused in the same ways, because she has traded silk for wool and arrows for pens, does not mean that she is any weaker. It means she has had to learn, to adapt to a new world.

* * *

She carries everyone in her hearts, on her shoulders. She bears the weight of their names, their stories.

She may have given them up, but she won’t forget them.

Fair-haired Peter, the lad who flung himself into being the father figure of their Blitzed family. The lad who would become Magnificent, who led the charge at Beruna and became High King. The Great Commander, Peter the Magnificent of the Clear Northern Sky.

(And all of this became because Peter’s goal in life was to protect his family, whether that be his siblings or his kingdom. Bravery and battle smarts were always second to that.)

Dark-eyed Edmund, the bitter boy who betrayed his family for a promise of sweets, who clutched at their father’s photo because it was all they had of him. The lad who gave his life to right his wrong, who spent every moment of his rule trying to make things right, to protect the kingdom he nearly sacrificed for his own greed. The Great Diplomat, Edmund the Just of the Great Western Wood.

(There were tales of his ambition, but Susan knows that after the White Witch, her brother was motivated by something entirely different. A desire to right wrongs, to use his cleverness and cunning to help others and not himself. During their reign, half of the time Edmund did not sleep in his own bed. He spent many a night in the homes of their subjects, comforting those grieving losses and celebrating weddings and births when they occurred. He organized Narnia’s irrigation system just as well as he did her defenses, provided help in anyway his cleverness could be utilized.

Of all her siblings, Susan thinks she had the most in common with Edmund. That desire to help others, to use cleverness to smite down those undeserving of power- that is something she understands.)

Bright-eyed Lucy, the girl who met a faun and only cared about the tune he could play on his flute, not the Witch who was after him. The whip-like Queen with calloused hands and soft words, who always carried a dagger and a cordial because sometimes the answer is war, and sometimes it is creation.The Great Healer, Lucy the Valiant of the Glistening Eastern Sea.

(Lucy spent more time near the battlefield than any of them did, helping transport wounded bodies and distributing drops of her cordial to those who were breaths away from death. The smallest Queen’s callouses came not from weapons, like her siblings, but from scalpels and bandages and stretchers.

Lucy’s reputation as healer was not unearned.)

Prince Caspian X, uniter of the Telmarines and the Narnians. Anna-Mae Brown, one of the first black female doctors in Britain. Eustace Scrubb, her annoying little cousin who probably became Great in some way in Narnia.

She carries their memories. She _does_ miss them, even if she has no desire to return. She doesn’t want them here, doesn’t want them unhappy, but some sure small part of her heart wants to see them again.

(And she knows she will.)

* * *

After her hundredth victorious case, Susan heads down to the primary school Abraham teaches at.

“100 wins,” she whispers to Abraham, who sneaks her a high five behind his desk.

“Sounds like congratulations are in order,” he says with a wink.

“Yeah,” she says, “You get to do laundry this week.”

He groans but still smiles at her. She feels her shoulders relax under the light of his smile- he has always been able to put her at ease. “Fine. As long as you stick around the classroom for the last hour of school.”

“I haven’t hosted storytime in awhile,” she offers, and his grin only grows in brilliance.

“Looks like Ms. Pevensie can conduct storytime today,” Abraham announces to the class, and the kids cheer as Susan sits down in Abraham’s beloved rocking chair. She remembers the day he got this job, when Claudia and her helped move his desk, chairs, and things into this room. This chair came from his mother, a schoolteacher herself, who had it made for her by her father.

“There is a story,” Susan begins, sweeping a little girl into her lap, “That begins with a family…”

-

This was never a story about Aslan, about wardrobes and mystical lands. This is a story about four siblings who found their way into their own worlds, into kingdoms and lives of their own. This is a story about growth, about finding your way into your own role.

This is a story about four people: a girl with stars in her eyes and a cordial in her hands, a boy who made himself a weapon when none was given to him, a girl who made her own kingdom, and a boy who used the greatest sword of all time to cut apples for children.

This is a story about heroes.

* * *

She remembers meeting her partners all those years ago, when they were all fresh out of college, idealistic and bright-eyed. They had gone out to pubs as “just friends,” spent days huddled in libraries, and believed the world to be theirs.

Now, there are copious wrinkles at the corners of Susan’s eyes. Abraham’s bushy brown hair is entirely salt-and-pepper now, the grey as prominent as the brown, and his hands are turning arthritic. Claudia’s barely aged a day, save for the few streaks of grey in her natural afro under her weave.

However, Abraham’s smile and Claudia’s eyes are still as bright as the day she met them. They still kiss under the maple tree by their house, play cards well into the night, and debate politics whenever the Prime Minister makes a speech.

(Sure, when they fall into bed more often than not they’re sleeping rather than making love, but at their age this is just as comfortable. The ease and trust between them speaks volumes to their love.)

* * *

When Susan left Narnia, left paradise, she left one breathtaking world for another. She left the beauties of Beruna, the majesty of the Lone Islands and the grandeur of Cair Paravel, for two people who love her, a never-ending line of innocent defendants, and a small house made for three.

(She cannot believe she made the wrong choice.)

* * *

Every hair on Susan’s head is white, now. Claudia’s hair is streaked all over with grey, and Abraham’s skin has grown wrinkled. They still celebrate Shabbat, still attend Labour meetings, still bake biscuits every other week.

Claudia has finally been elected to MP of their small district. She is serving in the House of Commons as a Labour Representative.

Abraham has retired from being a schoolteacher. When they moved to London for Claudia’s job, he was 65. He knew it was time to bid goodbye to all of his children. Nowadays, he takes care of their house and volunteers at the local library.

Susan will fight in the courtroom to the day she dies. This is a power she will not let them pry from her. Even forty years after she was ripped from her throne, she still sometimes feel the ache of emptiness.

This is the kingdom she’s made, the home she built from the wreckage of arrows and broken thrones. She is old, but she is not weak.

Susan Pevensie is Queen of this small kingdom, and no one recognizes her as such save herself. This is the only recognition she needs.

There is not a single lion to be found save her.


End file.
